his client has spent over a thousand days behind bars without trial and now for the first time the lawyer for private first class bradley manning is opening up about the case we'll bring you the rare appearance you won't want to miss. in twenty two months of a brutal civil war in syria and no end in sight while u.s. officials will mend over the possibility of the assad government using chemical weapons some reports suggest you hardest are taking to the rebel cause i had will compare the conflict in syria to libya excuse me. and american military efforts might be concentrated out the wars in the middle east but just across the border here at home the drug cartels are arms of the teeth with weapons they're not

a ragtag band of criminal gangs you'd imagine but a well armed force to be reckoned with ahead will take a peek into their arsenal of tools. it's tuesday december fourth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . ok if you've been living under a rock there is some news coming out of the u.k. prince william and kate are expecting their first child which has set off a media spectacle this is a huge story in europe but here in the u.s. the mainstream media has ramped it up take a look. ever since the royal couple got married britain has been waiting for its royal baby now that baby is on the way the media happy waiting for this story with bated breath it's a cute morning sickness so it's treated with a rehydration so cheesy with nutrients supplements and trying to get it back on

track they were planning to announce at this point that she is not yet twelve weeks pregnant they haven't even told prince charles or the queen about this until today . i am sure every woman is enjoying c.n.n.'s coverage and listening to a male reporter talk about morning sickness well while they are covering a story that has little impact here in the u.s. arts he will cover what is it really important and we begin with what's called one of the most significant military cases in u.s. history and that is the case of army private bradley manning he's accused of the biggest security breach ever and up until now manning's attorney david coombs has refrained from making public appearances or talking to the media but last night coombs and broke his silence and we were there at a church here in washington d.c. where coombs spoke about how the case has played out and described his relationship to manning. nearly three years after bradley manning

was arrested for leaking hundreds of thousands of top secret documents his attorney makes his first public appearance brad's treatment i want to do will forever be etched i believe in our nation's history as it disgraceful time not only was it stupid counterproductive. it was criminal that was the focus of a week of pretrial hearings leading up to cruise's debut to the press for the more than nine hundred days manning was locked up the defense says he was subject to solitary confinement for twenty three hours a day and a small six by eight foot cell where he faced forced nudity in sleep deprivation i'm confident by the time this case comes to a conclusion the record of trial will be the longest record trial in our military's history and his first court appearance manning described being detained he says he

felt like a caged animal using white tape he showed the court how small a cell was in quantico virginia he also put on a suicide smock he was forced to wear during the nine months he was held there manning supporters and the defense is calling this torture they're saying that manning has already been punished and because of this the charges against him should be dropped. his supporters see him as a hero for shining a light on the government's dark secrets one thing you don't see in the press at all is the good truth that has come out of these documents but his critics see him as a traitor putting national security at risk he's done more damage censure cowie to our national security this guy allowing all this stuff to get out there we cannot be trusted a lot of state department international causes they still have not forgiven us for that because we let this nobody has their manning's attorney paints a much different picture of his client he recalls his conversations with the army

private who hopes to one day get a college degree so i asked brad. what with that degree what do you plan on doing and he said i want to go into public service and i asked him what he meant but. he said i want to join some sort of campaign group. going to pull. out one day. run for public meanwhile of the military court looks into manning's pretrial treatment the military judge announced that the trial is postponed until march sixteenth at the earliest in washington liz wahl r.t. . well a deadly civil war in syria rages on and we are learning that the syrian regime could be harboring chemical weapons and as the opposition struggles to battle a good terminal regime more and more islamic jihad is are joining in the fight to topple syrian dictator bashar al assad it's estimated that there is around three

thousand of these extremists fighting in syria and ironically they're fighting alongside an opposition supported by the u.s. so how does this all factor into the bloody syrian conflict in syria middle east analyst ahmed thought the joins me now to answer that and more welcome there ahmed so how are extreme jihad is helping to join or finance the opposition in syria. jihadists are not something new do you have been in syria for quite some time they have been doing several of the. suicide bombing accidents the took place in and around damascus and various parts in syria they have been conducting execution narry slaughtering style totally inhumane so did i don't know why they are now all of a sudden they are becoming an article in the news they have been part of the struggle for quite a long time as to the second part of your question where they are getting their

finances the same way as the outside that is being getting its finances the same way as the extremists in libya is getting their finances the same way as those in mali have been getting their finances there are lots of people who are sympathizers to them from their opponents trained namely from saudi arabia where not the government of saudi arabia but saudi subjects who have financial resources and they are financing them so i'm not surprised that they are on the ground in syria they have contributed to the failure of the ceasefire brokered by a lot of the early brahimi the special u.n. arab league envoy to syria six weeks ago and they continue to be there my question to the free syrian army why do you need foreign fighters when you have a case that you solemnly believe in and you have the public support this isn't an answer to question are we seeing a new iraq. once more in syria or what's happening exactly these are lots of

gray areas that the syrian opposition need to address immediately and not a day after we have seen in egypt after the fall of the mubarak regime and the rise of the islamic fascist group of the muslim brotherhood and the elected president morsi who is one of the leadership how egypt what is drifting and the demonstrations we see today in cairo are the biggest example of that the people that the nations are not going to tolerate anymore fascism in the name of their religion now here talk a mad about who exactly are these extremists and what their motivation is and joining the opposition and toppling assad. there is two sides one which is political. which is these are elements from al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan

they have been infiltrated to syria through the its neighboring countries and to some of the this illusion young muslims in the arab world who've been sent to syria to fight on the hope of reaching or achieving martyrdom so there are two to two parts. earlier i mentioned that the financing come from wealthy saudis who are in doctrine in supporting these extreme into pretty asians of islam and it's not true islamic but where money is there this illusion the young people out there we can expect catastrophes the old french proverb blood john fail again the money makes you war. it's quite accurate in this situation now some people can't help but compare what's happening

now in syria to like it has played out in libya i want to ask you what parallels you can draw between what is happening now in syria between the two countries or do you see what similarities you see. the similarities in libya it was a tribal region headed leader headed by their fee in syria it's an alawite a b.g. headed by bashar assad both. leaderships have committed atrocities against their own people none from their sect but through other sects remember in one thousand nine hundred two or. the father of the short of the former syrian president have executed more than fifty thousand people in how much you third largest city in syria. said the current that said the regime they are now playing a very dangerous game and the reports emerging from syria that he's gonna is

preparing to use chemical weapons it's only indicative indication that bashar last night in his last days and this is his just have his his back to the wall and he's willing to commit any crime imaginable and unimaginable to remain in power but shuttle as must go there were initiatives presented on the table to have a person like farrukh ashara the former vice president and long term foreign minister to head it transitional administration in syria till they hold elections and they can transfer into a democratic phase this initiative we don't hear about it these days there is lots of. reports but not substantiated coming out of syria that we are witnessing the final days of a shot at us now if the civil war continues at this point we don't see

a clear on the inside i want to ask you what will happen to the christians that are there in syria i pray for the christians in syria i pray for the seculars in syria i pray for the liberals in syria praying for anybody who is not affiliated with the islam or fascists groups like the muslim brotherhood or the salivary jihadists etc you use whatever you want to name them. everybody is in danger in syria this at this at this moment if the assad regime falls then everybody who is not part of the islamist movements will be a great danger not only to christians are at a mad i want to thank you very much for joining us that was a mad. and middle east analyst. also ahead here on our table and the seemingly endless and increasingly violent drug war mexico's mexico's police have more than

a small criminal gang to deal with these cartels are well organized and armed to the gills i had a look at the tools of the trade and the seriousness of this problem. it's part of american power continues. things in our country. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drug or starbucks has

a surprising. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares and. sorry. in a way out of my cancer cells but i want us to defeat terrorism

a limp all the chris. farley. goes over to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells us and facials the garbage he calls it breaking news i'm abby martin and we're going to break that.

mr. we turn now to a war being fought right along our borders and that is the war on drugs mexico's attorney general is now saying that twenty five thousand people have gone missing in the last six years this image chaos and violence that has ensued in mexico as it struggles to fight drug cartels now some say that it's u.s. policies that fuel the war on drugs emboldening the drug mafias that profit that

legal drug market but beyond policy is mexico's cartels are armed with massive arsenals take a look at some of the tools of their trade as you can see they have plenty of a k forty seven rifles machine guns and shotguns just to name a few rocket propelled grenade launchers you see here are some of the heaviest weapons the cartels use and they even have their own monster trucks mexico says the they've seized more than one hundred of them so where do the the cartels get their weapons some are from central america but most of them come from the united states in fact the bureau of alcohol tobacco tobacco and firearms found that sixty eight thousand of ninety nine thousand guns found in mexico actually originated in the u.s. well for more on where and how drug gangs are arming themselves i'm joined now by matthew feeney associate editor for reason dot com welcome matthew so first

want to ask you. want to talk about how these guns and where they are coming from. some figures out there seventy percent of the guns that are seized in mexico. and they were sent to a u.s. gun tracing program from the u.s. . they. excuse me the gun tracing program from the us shows that seventy percent are from here in the u.s. could you elaborate a bit more on how these cartels are getting armed so as you mentioned a lot of them are coming from central america smuggled that way through the south but a significant amount are coming from inside of the border and while a lot of this is illegal smuggling we shouldn't forget that actually through operations like fast and furious that a lot of these guns were deliberately channeled to cartels and the a.t.f. has you know as years has shown screwed this up a little bit

a lot of these guns have appeared in murders the point of it was to track weapons to high. type players in the cartels but it obviously hasn't been successful you just mentioned fast and furious and right now there is a big debate here it's been a long running debate over gun control especially after certain tragedies could this be an example of how lax gun laws lead to the cartels being able to easily obtain them in the u.s. i think if we wanted to actually discuss cartels in the weapons that they're using i don't think it's good to focus on american gun policy these people are going to get done whatever the gun laws are in the united states so i think it's not really worth us discussing. how we might be able to change our own laws in regards to guns what we should be thinking of how we can change our policies towards drugs and that's what the mexicans and american government really really have to be focusing on well one way or another these these drug gangs are finding it relatively easy to

get ahold of guns here in the u.s. as we saw that's where they're getting most of their guns and you had mentioned policies i mean what can what can the u.s. do work can the u.s. do anything to prevent these weapons from getting in the hands of cartels no i don't think there's anything that we can do significantly to make a huge amount of difference to the number of weaponry that. mexican cartels are going to get from the united states is a huge number of guns in the united states not going to go anywhere like i said what we should be doing is focusing on what the our drug policies are and we need to be vastly liberalizing our drug policies to disincentive to the violence that's happening in mexico all right i want to ask you the these figures just came out twenty five thousand adults and children announced are missing seven thousand bodies remain unidentified and morgues matthew why isn't more being done to help these families that are still looking for loved ones and does this show that the fight backed by the u.s.

against drug cartels is failing well there's only so much that the mexican government can do its military and police are already vastly overstretched and actually these figures only arose not with the government's permission but they were leaps if i remember correctly and so what can actually be done on the mexican side is actually a change in policy and a change in focus so it's obviously tragic for these families but the best thing to do to stop these disappearances happening is for the mexican government to actually . rethink drastically the way that they've been approaching this problem of the last six years or a huge push to try and crack down using the mexican military and trying to reform what's happening in the police and it just hasn't worked something much more drastic needs to be done. what exactly do you think needs to be done my policy my own policy recommendation would be is that mexico and america both legalize at the very very least marijuana and you know i do we all drugs now are a lot of these figures comes from the time calderon when the bloody conflict we

saw a lot of violence and a lot of deaths of course mexico is now under new leadership. is that going to change the situation there or do you think of it is any indication there's going to be a drastic change as well certainly not as drastic change as i would like but i think it's interesting that you know leaders in the united states and mexico once they're out of office do venture to come back and speak publicly about how the drug war is a failure it's just a shame that you can't get someone who's actually in office to make. make that change so do you think as long as the u.s. his policies and they approach on the war on drugs remains the same that this is going to continue along the border yes as long as drugs are illegal in the united states people are going to have to find ways to smuggle them in. and you know there's no reason to think that drug consumption is going to decrease in the united states at all so what what we should be doing is trying to minimize the amount of

violence and that's not by trying to you know spend a huge amount of resources and stemming the weapons that are here anyway and then to get to the cartels anyway but just by using smarts good policies that will actually address the economics of the situation right it sounds like you're heading towards legalization it looks like the u.s. is a long way off from doing that it's still against the law against federal law so. is that even seem realistic so we are very long way away from what a libertarian. policy would be but there are you know reassuring signs that public opinion seems to be very on the side of legalization of marijuana at least and you know recent initiatives in colorado and washington have pasta i think you know we're a long way off but we are going in the right direction what remains to be seen is how aggressive the federal government is going to be in cracking down on these state initiatives i mean that is touted as a possible solution but a even if that did happen do you really think that that would. encourage the

cartels to stop the violence are they just going to try to make a profit one way or another so there are other markets that they could decide to move into and i'm not saying that you know the legalization of drugs would be the cure all problem cure all policy for mexico i think there's a lot of other reasons why mexico is in the situation it is that is you know its own economy is suffering and that is a lot of corruption politically so i don't think legalization of drugs would be the silver bullets that cures all of these problems but i think would be a really important first step all rights are maybe the first step is trying to make sure that they don't get armed with all these. dangerous weapons back to you appreciate you for weighing and that was matthew feeney is associate editor for reason dot com. well iran today said it captured a u.s. drone that was flying over its airspace in the gulf this is what iran state run media press t.v. is reporting. ron has captured a u.s.

drone that is violated the country's airspace you're looking at the latest pictures that have come in in which the r.g.c. has made this announcement and it is backing that up with what you're seeing there on your screen of the u.s. however is denying this u.s. officials say no drones are missing and there's no evidence to back up iran's claims this was a recent report out of the washington post says that the amount of drone crashes are on the rise it's particularly high among drones that take off from civilian airports one issue at the civilian airports is the air traffic controllers u.s. drone crews complaining that air traffic controllers in djibouti are poorly trained speak little english and give preference to civilian flights even when drones are very low on fuel and that's not all investigations into one predator crash in march two thousand and eleven found that the pilot was quote confused and inattentive when landing the plane and because he was working from

a remote location he wasn't fully aware of the wind and weather conditions with this in mind it makes you wonder if the if the prospect of a drone getting lost overseas shouldn't come as a shock. and we're going to leave it off there but coming up next is the capital account with lauren lister let's check in with lauren to see what is on today's agenda lauren what it will can we look forward to hi liz well if you've looked on any t.v. and we have many in the news room so i'm sure you have seen them to fiscal cliff is still what is all over the place another day another minor development the g.o.p. set out its plan and president obama gave his first one on one interview which was focused on the fiscal cliff now this is framed as a domestic debate when we're sitting here in washington and looking at the headlines in u.s. papers on us t.v. screens but remember this is reaching far beyond the u.s. borders creating headlines internationally of u.s. budget woes it reminds me at least of the debt ceiling debate in two thousand and

eleven that reverberated around the globe and amounted to the first downgrade of the u.s. is credit in history so given that we're going to look at the perspective internationally and what other countries and other international players are thinking as they're sitting there watching these budget debates and going hey i've got all of these dollars as reserves in my central bank and what does this say about the u.s. as a kind of the centerpiece of the global monetary system that everyone is counting on as the global reserve currency we'll talk about that coming up in just a few minutes right lauren thanks for that update looking forward to it but that's going to do it now for the news but for more of the stories we covered you can head on over to our you tube channel we post everything there in full that's you tube dot com slash r t america you can also check out our website that's r t dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter as well the capital account as of next

with formless still we will be right back here and a half hour. mother mission free accreditation free transport charges free. range mentioned free. treatment skew tied free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media and on to r t dot com you.

more news today violence is once again flared up the full these are the images cobol has been seeing from the streets of china that. china corporations are all day.